A talk Suitable for students of mathematics, from high school to
faculty and postdoctoral research

By Ian Stewart
Professor of Mathematics
University of Warwick, Coventry, England

What is life? Why is the world of living creatures so different
from
the inorganic world? The discovery of the first secret of life, the
molecular structure of DNA, in the middle of this century, showed
that Life is a form of chemistry - but chemistry unlike any that
ever graced a test tube. Some secrets, however, lie deeper that the
genetic code. It is the mathematical law of physics and chemistry
that control the growing organism's response to its genetic
instructions.

That is Life's OTHER Secret.

Its full understanding will come only when we combine the
mathematical and physical sciences with biochemistry, genetics,
and developmental biology. One of the most exciting growth areas of
twenty-first century science will be biomathematics. The next
century will withness an explosion of new mathematical concepts,
of new kinds of mathematics, brought into being by the need to
understand the patterns of the living world.